The Girl I Was Before (Falling #3)(61)
“The mean witch locks Delilah up in the tower, and then the prince gets his friends together so they can save her, but when he gets there, the tower is scary, so all his friends leave, and he has to fight the witch and her dragon alone. He kills them, and then saves the princess and they run away and get married.”
Leah is out of breath when she finishes retelling Paige the entire princess book. I smile at her voice, doing my best not to laugh at her enthusiasm over a story she’s heard no less than a hundred times.
Then Paige begins to talk, and my chest grows heavy.
“I’d like to tell you a different version, if that’s okay,” she says.
“What’s a version?” Leah asks. I cover my mouth with my knuckle, smiling against it.
“It’s sort of like, hmmmm…it’s kind of a different way the story could go. You know how you get up in the morning and decide what you’re going to wear? And maybe if you wear a dress, that means you can’t do cartwheels or swing on the swings. But what if you wore shorts instead?”
“I’d swing,” Leah says excitedly, then whispers, “sometimes I swing in the dress. Grandma yells that I’m showing my underwear.”
She giggles and Paige laughs with her.
“Right, but most of the time, what you decide in the morning might mean you do different things later. Well what would happen if Delilah decided not to wait for the prince?” Paige asks.
“Oh no!” Leah’s genuinely worried by this. I’m…fascinated. I slide down slowly so I’m sitting against the wall now, my legs bent up under my arms, careful not to be seen. I don’t want to distract either of them.
“Well maybe…oh no. Or…maybe what Delilah decides—when the evil witch locks her up—is that she’s tired of being pushed around,” Paige says. I lay my face flat against my hands, so desperate for her version now.
“Delilah is scared at first. She’s never really been good at fighting. Her dad always led the army. And her mom only decorates for balls and picks flowers in the garden and things like that. So Delilah spends the first night alone, in the dark room, locked away in the tower, hoping someone will save her. But when she wakes up the next morning, she realizes that nothing bad happened to her. The dark was scary, but nothing happened. She’s okay. So she finds a slender piece of wood along the floor and uses it to pick the lock.”
“Oh no!” Leah says, but Paige stops her from worrying.
“Just wait,” Paige says. “She picks the lock, and nobody is near by. So she decides to explore the stairway, to see how high it goes, how deep it is, and if there is a way to get outside. When she hears someone coming, she runs back to her small room and locks the door, tucking the tiny wood pick into the braid of her hair.”
“Every day, she explores a little farther, finding new doors, trying new hallways. And then finally…she finds a tunnel.”
“There’s a tunnel?” Leah asks.
“Oh yes. There’s a tunnel. But you only find it if you’re brave enough to look. Delilah was brave, so she found it. She was also getting stronger, because every night, when she would explore, she would run, and have to pull herself up high on walls, crawl through tight spaces, and lift heavy things. When she found the tunnel, she decided she needed to escape the next night, well after midnight, when she knew the guards would be sleepy. But what she didn’t know, was that the prince was coming to save her at the very same time.”
“He was?” Leah asks.
“Yes, he was. When the moon was at its highest, Delilah picked her lock and made her way to her tunnel, crawling through the narrow damp passageway until she felt the cold air from outside hit her cheeks. She kept her body low to the ground, crawling on her belly under fence after fence, through mud, through a thick forest of trees, all the way to the dangerous guard gates and the wall of fire. She’d practiced the timing, and she knew she could get across it if she was careful counting the seconds in-between flames. But when the time was ready for her to run and make her escape, she heard shouting and fighting.”
“Did someone catch her?” Leah asks.
“No. They caught…the prince!” Paige says, and I hear Leah gasp. “Delilah was only one leap away from her freedom, but when she saw the prince was in trouble, she couldn’t leave him.”
“What did she do?” Leah asks.
“She ran through the darkness to the drawbridge. The prince was being tied with rope to the back of a horse, to be led into the witch’s tower for punishment. She looked everywhere for something she could use, something that would help her defeat the guards. There were so many of them, but only one of her. And then she noticed a large barrel of oil. The guards used the oil to keep their torches lit.
“Delilah had grown strong enough, she was able to push the barrel over, spreading the slick liquid all over the bridge in their path. She waited, hidden underneath one of the bridge’s trusses, holding herself with her tiring arms, until she heard the horses begin to walk above her. Careful not to make any sound, she crawled around the bridge’s edge, doing her best to not be seen. The mud that covered her body kept her disguised. Then, she reached into her hair, and pulled out the tiny wood stick, sharp on one end, and she poked the leg of one of the horses.
“The horse leapt up on his back legs, and began jerking wildly, scaring every other horse, which caused many of the guards to lose their balance and drop their torches into the oil. The oil caught fire—igniting the bridge in fiery flames, which frightened the horses even more. They all took off in various directions, including the horse that the prince was still tied to. That horse is the only one Delilah cared about. She followed it, deep into the forest, but didn’t make a sound or let the prince know she was near until she was sure they were far enough away from the others.”